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Wednesday, April 5, 2017

The man who transformed a land of rocks into the most fertile land of the world.

In the picture Fernando Funes, Agricultural Engineer, in “Finca Marta” a land at 20 kilometers of Havana, Cuba. He cultivates more than 60 species in Finca Marta, a sustentable-ecological farm he attends and works with his wife.

Today, his land is among the most productive lands in the world, and his employees are among the best paid. However, only four years ago, these lands were very different from how they are today. What is now a fertile, softly undulating land, was then compact soil, full of stones, woody marabu and lacking any water. Some believe that you have to be very ignorant or extremely crazy to think that an ecological, self-sustainable, agricultural project could be successful in such land. To give life to his project Fernando had to abandon the agricultural theory he believed in since he earned his doctorate in Holland; and, his wife had to renounce to her position with Melia Hotel International. Both felt as if they were taking a leap of faith, jumping into the dark. Nevertheless, they found themselves landing on their feet.

The beginning, they say, was very difficult; it took them seven months to open a water hole, breaking the stone in the ground manually, armed mainly with a pry bar. And yet, with effort, there were results. The first thing they were able to commercialize was mangoes which they collect opening paths through the wooden marabou with their bare hands.

Agriculture in Cuba was always complicated. Many slaves died because of failed attempts by colonizers trying to make these lands produce more than they could produce. Nature has also been devastated because it has not been treated properly. “Theory helps you understand the world in pieces; practice, however, is multi-dimensional, multi-directional and complex. One of the motivations I had to develop this project was precisely to try to understand agriculture from inside, within its own contradictions, within its own challenges,” said Funes.

Now he wants to spread his work so others get the courage to start agro-ecological projects as miraculous as his all over the world.